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I had found gqlplus.sourceforge.net which seems to have the arrow-up at least. I will keep this question just a little longer, maybe more recommendations come in. Toad and Vorax are quite good recommendations.
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Sebastian RothJan 4 '11 at 5:14

You could provide a link to SQL*Plus for people not engaged with Oracle. The question solve your problem but it should be useful to other users learning from SE content.
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bigownJan 4 '11 at 14:23

Done that, thx. Wow, so many feedback & responses. Thanks to everyone. I will take a look and close this Q now.
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Sebastian RothJan 5 '11 at 2:17

12 Answers
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but for example no "arrow-up" key for the previous history entry is available.

You're talking about sqlplusw the "GUI" tool - the oldschool sqlplus does support
arrow-up-bring-previous-statements feature.

What is a good replacement / extension for sqlplus

Oracle's SQL Developer, a free GUI-based tool, is pretty neat.

If you're a vim addict, there's VoraX which is augments SQL*Plus very well.

VoraX aims to be a simple, yet a powerful IDE for Oracle databases. Instead of reinventing the wheel, VoraX relies on the well-known SqlPLUS which is actually used to connect to the database, to execute SQL statements and to get the results back. However, this interaction is hidden from the user who just uses his/her Vim environment without knowing that, behind, a SqlPLUS process does all the work.

The big advantage of this approach is that almost all SqlPLUS commands may be used without a problem. You can format columns, set pagination, autotrace queries etc.

FEATURES

99.9% of the sqlplus commands supported

advanced code completion

it runs on Windows and UNIX

a nice results window with highlighting for errors and logging support

a database explorer which may be used to browse the database objects in a hierarchical way

support for editing and compiling PLSQL objects like packages, types etc.

For GUI, I use SQL Developer from Oracle. It has just about everything you might need, including prebuilt SQL for ASH/AWR reports, sessions, memory, and other management. It's helpful to me since my official role isn't DBA but I do a lot of that work.

SQL Plus has an equivalent to the up arrow: list or l. It's not as good, just showing the last command only and you still have to copy & paste it into the prompt.

SQL*Plus has a role for Oracle Database Administration, very similar like vi has in the UNIX/Linux OS world. It is not everybodys darling, but it will always be there and it will always work. Better get familiar with it if you are a DBA.

Developers can afford to strive for something more comfortable like SQL Developer :-)

since you mentioned ssh; you might want to take a look at DbVisualizer It has integrated ssh tunneling, is running on multiple platforms and supports about every database that has a jdbc driver available. The developer is also very responsive and if you happen to be able to find a not supported database, they will add it with pleasure. (and quick).

One of the other 'killer' features is graphs directly from a result set and the monitoring feature. This is a timed query that appends the results to a grid that we can use to create a graph from, realtime. For example see Ad hoc monitoring

TOra (Toolkit for Oracle) is a free software database development and administration GUI, available under the GNU General Public License. It features a PL/SQL debugger, an SQL worksheet with syntax highlighting, a database browser and a comprehensive set of database administration tools.

Are you associated with TOra in any way? If you are, you should make that clear in your post. If you aren't you probably should make that clear when posting what appears to be an advertisement for the product mentioned. Thanks!
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Max VernonApr 1 '13 at 15:20

You should try out dbWatch. It is a tool for monitoring, reporting and administration across database platforms. It currently supports Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Sybase and Ingres.

One of the things included in dbWatch is SQL Worksheet which is a sqlplus like interface that also allows for cross database sqls, for example if you are looking for a table across all your databases or want to remove a user.

I work there and i suggest you try it out. (http://www.dbwatch.com/)Let us know what you think. There is a 10 day free full use license included by default, but we extend your test period if you need a bit more time to test it.